New Dashpoint Log: Scout claimed GD001-AJQC

[Geodashing Emails]

New Dashpoint Log

User: Scout

Dashpoint: GD001-AJQC

Distance: 96 meters

Points Gained: 3

New Total Points: 3

Field Notes

Scout here. My first dash point! It's behind the fence at the back of this suburban house in Little Elm, Texas, 15 miles north of the Dallas border, still well within the Dallas urban area. Nothing remrkable here. It's just another tract of housing like all the others that stretch from Dallas up to the Oklahoma border (or at least it seems like that).

Photos

[Lucien Van Elsen]

Congratulations!  So glad you were able to get a point in this game :-)

[Scout GPSgames]

Thank you for the welcome. It was nice to take this road trip to a completely meaningless random spot on Earth. I missed it.

Here are some observations about the new game engine.

I like how the map shows a 100 meter circle around the dashpoint. So I can just whether I'm within the magic circle just by looking at the map. Nice.

However when I submitted my find, the game engine reported my distance as being 95 meters. Double checking just now from home, Google Maps measures it as 67 meters. I can't explain the discrepancy.

A potential problem is what happens if I score a dashpoint while driving past it on the highway. By the time I can pull over and bring up the game engine, I am no longer within the magic 100m circle. The game engine will no longer let me submit my find. Do I have that behavior right?

Finally, I noticed a delay between when I submitted my find and when I saw the report show up on the mailing list. Then, I edited my log to correct a typing mistake. Where I see can be problematic is if I don't have time to submit a full report on-site so I just submit a stub. Then when i return home I submit a full report. I hever found an elegant way to handle this on Geodashing 1.0. Maybe that's still necessary. Submit the stub; edit it online report; reply to the email with the edited report so readers will see it. 

[Lucien Van Elsen]

Hi Scout,

Thanks for the observations!

Submitting Logs

You can always manually enter your coordinates. The "Sync GPS" button is just there to prefill them for convenience; it isn't required, and the system doesn't check your location at the moment you hit submit. In the scenario you described, you could hit "Sync GPS" as you pass the point and then complete the log later, or simply manually enter the coordinates and text once you are home.

Email Delays

This is a more difficult issue. Emails should be sent immediately upon submission. I have configured SPF/DKIM/DMARC correctly, but since geodashing.org is a relatively new, low-traffic domain, Gmail's filters can be skeptical. I encourage Gmail users to add das...@geodashing.org to their contacts or create a filter to ensure these emails never go to spam. Hopefully, the domain reputation will improve over time.

Coordinate Discrepancy

I will look into this using the coordinates from your logs. I’ve tried to keep everything in WGS-84, but a small discrepancy like that suggests a potential datum problem or a rounding error somewhere :/

Draft Reports

Currently, you can edit your visits while a game is active, but the server doesn't maintain any state for drafts beyond submitted logs. If the lack of a formal "draft" feature is causing issues, I can certainly look into adding better support for it.

Thanks again!

Lucien